>>>This is a slightly sports obsessed site so I am surprised no one has said anything yet about the Super Bowl. So here we go. I have plenty of thoughts about it but will lay back.
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>>Oh yeah ?!? Well, you don' know what yer talkin' about !!! <s>
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>Serious question.
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>I was cycling up through Finsbury Park on Sunday and there where a few sides playing American Football. Made me wonder.
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>Why do they wear all the body armour and the helmets ?
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>Rugby is quite a contact sport and they don't.
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>I especially wonder about the helmet. I headbutting allowed ?

there has actually been a big deal this season about "spearing" or launching yourself to use the helmet as a battering ram. Very illegal but used to be a more common practice. What is the concussion level among ruggers? We get a lot of concussions even with the helmets. As to the padding - shoulder pads are meant for shoulder to shoulder contact. Linemen smash into each other on every play - i.e. 70 times or so a game. They weight 300 pounds each and they are training to hit hard. I agree rugby is about as tough as it gets, and I don't know much about the injury level but the human body can only take what it can take and NFL players are surely in the same kind of physical condition as professional ruggers so I would assume the rules must be different enough that one can survive a rugby game without the padding but in the NFL you would die before half-time. If you've watched US pro football you've surely seen that contact is not just incidental - boys playing rough - but an integral part of the game. I think tackling rules are very different.

Are there rules against playing rugby drunk ? <bg> I know in college that was the only way we could get guys to play.

( just did a little research, and it seems a big difference is that with no forward passes you don't have people moving at the speeds of NFL wide receivers and kickoff returns in NFL are particularly brutal as two sides move toward each other at a dead run. also, if I understand correctly you have a rule against obstruction, not allowing contact with players not carrying the ball. In football that is blocking, it is an integral part of the game and most players will block or be blocked - often hard enough to knock them down or knock them out - on every play. )